NCI Special Notes

Funded K25 Grants

Submitting an Application

Peer Review Process

Frequently Asked Questions

NCI Staff Contacts

Introduction

The Mentored Quantitative Research Career Development Award uses the K25 grant mechanism to support the career development of investigators, with quantitative scientific and engineering backgrounds outside of biology or medicine, who have made a commitment to focus their research endeavors on behavioral and biomedical research (basic or clinical). It is intended for research-oriented investigators from the postdoctoral level to the level of senior faculty. This award provides support for a period of supervised study and research for professionals who have the potential to integrate their expertise with biomedicine and develop into productive investigators. The project period may be for up to five years with a minimum of three years. Awards are not renewable.

Candidates must have demonstrated research interests with an advanced degree in a quantitative area of science or engineering (e.g., M.S.E.E., Ph.D., D.Sc.), must identify a mentor who has behavioral or biomedical research experience, and must be willing to spend at least 75 percent of full-time professional effort conducting research career development and basic or clinical research. At time of award, candidates must be citizens or noncitizen nationals of the United States, or have been lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence (i.e., in possession of a currently valid Alien Registration Receipt Card I-551, or other legal verification of such status). Individuals on temporary or student visas are not eligible. Former principal investigators on NIH research project (R01), program project (P01), center grants, FIRST Awards (R29), SBIR/STTR awards, sub-projects of program project (P01) or center grants, K01, K08 or K23 awards, or the equivalent are not eligible.

Program Announcement

PA-06-087 MENTORED QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH CAREER DEVELOPMENT AWARD (K25) ¹

Allowable Costs

Under the K25 mechanism, the NCI supports salary (up to $75,000 per year plus fringe benefits), research development support (up to $40,000 per year) for tuition, fees and books, research expenses, statistical services, and travel to research meetings. Ancillary personnel costs (mentors, secretaries and administrative assistants) are not allowed. Eight percent facilities and administrative costs (previously called indirect cost) is allowed.

Data Sharing

Under the NIH Data Sharing Policy ², grantees are expected to engage in a timely release of final data sets that have been generated with NIH support for use by other researchers, provide a Data Sharing Plan that will achieve this objective, OR state why data sharing is not possible or appropriate. No Data Sharing Plan is required for the mentored K25 mechanism because it supports career development, rather than, a research grant. It supports salaries and other ancillary costs for individual awardees, but it does not provide support for the generation of research data, directly. With regard to the data generated by K25 grantees working in research environments funded by NIH research grants, it is the responsibility of the institutions that are awarded these research grants to share the data and provide acceptable Data Sharing Plans to the NIH as part of the research application.

#	Grant Number	Principal Investigator Name	Project Title	Institution
1	5K25CA104162-04	Beebe, David J	Study Of Progenitor Regulation In Mouse Mammary Gland	University Of Wisconsin Madison
2	5K25CA111636-03	Clarke, Jennifer Pittman	Clinico-Genomics For Improved Ovarian Cancer Treatment	Duke University
3	5K25CA122176-02	Craig, Benjamin M	Obesity, Aging, And Cancer Cost (OACC) Study	University Of Wisconsin Madison
4	1K25CA116291-01A2	Feng, Yusheng	MRTI Guided Integrative ModelFor Cancer Treatment	University Of Texas Austin
5	1K25CA128666-01	Hawkridge, Adam M	Comparative Proteomics Applied To The Avian Model Of Ovarian Cancer	North Carolina State University Raleigh
6	5K25CA106863-03	Jiang, Shudong	Pressure-Enhanced Near-Infrared Breast Cancer Imaging	Dartmouth College
7	1K25CA119344-01A2	Kissick, Michael W	Delivery Artifact Investigations Of Helical Tomotherapy	University Of Wisconsin Madison
8	1K25CA126836-01A1	Mcallister, Ryan G	Biomechanics Of Invading Breast Cancer Cells In 3D Matrices: Invadopodia Function	Georgetown University
9	5K25CA106799-03	Meyer-Baese, Anke	CAD In Breast MRI Based On Biological Neural Network	Florida State University
10	5K25CA104791-03	Radivoyevitch, Tomas	Biochemical System Analyses Of IdUrd In MMR Cells	Case Western Reserve University
11	1K25CA120350-01A2	Romanowski, Marek J	A Near-Infrared Contrast Agent For Targeted Imaging Of Cancer	University Of Arizona
12	5K25CA114254-02	Seo, Youngho	Prostate Cancer Management With Multimodality Imaging	University Of California San Francisco
13	5K25CA100290-02	Song, Loling	Imaging Dynamic Aspects Of Mammary Morphogenesis And Oncogenesis	Harvard University (Medical School)
14	5K25CA113133-04	Sreenath, Sree N	Larva To Butterfly:Training As Systems Cancer Biologist	Case Western Reserve University
15	1K25CA127465-01	Vakoc, Benjamin	Image-Guided Laser Therapy For Barrett's Esophagus	Massachusetts General Hospital
16	1K25CA123112-01A1	Wu, Xiaodong	Accurate Target Delineation And Motion Tracking To Improve IMRT Effectiveness	University Of Iowa
17	5K25CA106988-04	Yeung-Rhee, Ka Yee	Improved Pattern Recognition For Functional Genomics	University Of Washington

Submitting an Application

In submitting an application for the K25 Award, the applicant must use the PHS 398 Form (Revised 9/2004) ³, and should download the instructions and the Research Career Development Award form files. Refer to Section III of the instructions, "Preparing an Individual CDA Application. It is suggested that you print, if possible, the pages of PHS 398 Form (Revised 9/2004) ³ and carefully review all pages, especially the section titled "NOTABLE CHANGES MADE TO PHS 398. This section contains information to facilitate the completion of your application.

The PHS 398 Form (Revised 9/2004) ³ is also available at most institutional offices of sponsored research and from the Division of Extramural Outreach and Information Resources, Office of Extramural Research, NIH, Phone (301) 435-0714, Fax (301) 480-0525, E-mail: GrantsInfo@nih.gov.

Application Receipt Dates and Review Schedule

If the application receipt date falls on a weekend, the application must be postmarked by the application receipt date and received at the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) by the following Monday.

If the application receipt date falls on a holiday, (but not on a weekend), the application must be postmarked by the application receipt date and received at CSR by the following day.

* Start dates are determined by the availability of NCI funds and may not occur until well after the earliest possible start date.

Upon receipt, competing applications will be reviewed both by the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for completeness and for conformance to all eligibility requirements and special provisions and requirements. Incomplete applications will be returned to the applicant without further consideration.

Those applications judged to be complete and eligible will be evaluated, according to the review criteria listed in the Program Announcement by a peer review group convened by the Division of Extramural Activities of the NCI. A second level of review will be conducted by the National Cancer Advisory Board that will ensure that the application meets the broad program needs and priorities of the NCI and the National Cancer Program before an award can be made.

For review criteria for the K25 grant mechanism, see the REVIEW CRITERIA section of the Program Announcement: PA-06-087 MENTORED QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH CAREER DEVELOPMENT AWARD (K25) ¹.

1. Is the K25 Award appropriate for an individual who is still in a postdoctoral position?
It is intended for research-oriented investigators from the postdoctoral level to the level of senior faculty.

2. I am conducting research using database and tool integration for large-scale analysis of genomic/proteomic data including microarray data. Does this research fit into NCI's requirements for the K25 Award?
If the mentor's research is cancer related and if the investigator is willing to be your mentor, then you may be eligible for the K25 Award. For details access the K25 Program Announcement ¹, and contact the NCI Training Program (see NCI Staff Contacts ⁴).

For additional information regarding policies and/or guidance in preparing an application for the K25 Award, contact:

Dr. Sonia B. Jakowlew
Program Director
Telephone: (301) 496-8580
Fax: (301) 402-4472
E-mail: jakowles@mail.nih.gov

For information regarding review issues, contact:

Referral Officer
Division of Extramural Activities
Phone: (301) 594-1403
Fax: (301) 402-0275